The present disclosure relates to a sealing member provided to a door for a car and, in particular, belongs to a technical field of a construction which involves insertion of various kinds of parts such as a trim strip and a door flange.
Doors provided to a side of a car include a door having a window frame holding an edge portion of a window glass, and a door having no window frame; that is, a door having a frameless window. The door having the window frame is provided with a sealing member for sealing a gap between the edge portion of the window frame and an edge portion of an opening portion of the body of the car.
A known example of the construction of the door with this kind of window frame is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2012-131304. The window frame in the patent publication has an upper frame portion extending along a roof of the body. The upper edge portion is provided with a door flange protruding toward the outside of the compartment. The door flange has a sealing member provided from the outside of the compartment to cover the door flange. Such a construction—the sealing member is provided from the outside of the compartment to cover up the door flange on the upper frame portion—is referred to as a “hidden type”.
The sealing member disclosed in the patent publication includes an insertion groove opening toward the outside of the compartment, and continuously formed from a front portion toward a rear portion of the upper frame portion. The insertion groove receives a securing leg of a trim strip so that the trim strip is secured to the sealing member.
Moreover, the door flange, also formed on the door other than the trim strip, is inserted into the sealing member of the door for the car. Insertion of this door flange allows the sealing member to be secured to the door.
Moreover, as disclosed in the patent publication, an elongated trim strip is secured between the front portion and the rear portion of the upper frame portion in order to improve the appearance of the window frame of the door. Here, a manufacturing challenge is how to secure the trim strip to the hidden-type sealing member.
Here, typically, the window frame of a front door for the car has an upper edge portion formed to bend round such that the upper edge portion is positioned lower as extending further toward the front. Consequently, the upper edge portion is shaped to have a bent portion. Meanwhile, the sealing member is shaped liner. When secured to the upper edge portion of the window frame, this liner-shaped sealing member is forcibly bent to fit into the shape of the bent portion of the upper edge portion. Here, the sealing member cannot conform to the difference between an outer peripheral length and an inner peripheral length of the bent portion of the upper edge portion. The resulting sealing member is forcibly bent. Forcibly bending the sealing member inevitably closes an opening of an insertion groove into which the sealing member is inserted. As a result, the closed opening causes a problem; that is, inserting the securing leg of the trim strip becomes difficult, followed by degrading workability when the trim strip is fastened to the sealing member.
Moreover, when the door flange is inserted, the sealing member has to be bent and secured as described above. Thus, the problem is that the opening of the insertion groove is closed and, as a result, inserting the door flange can be difficult.
Furthermore, the insertion groove of the sealing member could possibly be closed on its own even in a non-bent portion of the sealing member. This case also makes it difficult to insert various kinds of parts into the insertion groove.
The present disclosure is conceived in view of the above problems. When an insertion groove, into which various parts are inserted, is formed on a sealing member, the present disclosure successfully maintains a width of an opening of the insertion groove greater than or equal to a predetermined width and provides high workability in the insertion.